Bear Grease - Ep. 239: Battle for the Buffalo - A River's Erased Civilization

Episode Date: August 7, 2024

In 1972, the Buffalo River in northern Arkansas was designated the nation's "First National River" - a celebrated act of Utilitarian Conservation. But in the process, 2,000 families along the river were stripped of their generational land by eminent domain. In this episode of the Bear Grease podcast, listen along as Clay Newcomb tells the story of these people consigned to oblivion and the sacrifices forced on them to create these public lands. Follow 78-year-old local Willard Villines on a mule ride through the wilderness as he shows Clay the forgotten homesteads of family members, and even the remains of the home that was his birthplace. Clay speaks with Misty Langdon, a descendant of these families and creator of The Remnants Project, which documents the history of Newton County, and Dr. Brooks Blevins, Ozark historian, author, and hillbilly, describes the dirty work of "progress."  Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days in real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware gear at firstlight.com. There are people all up and down the Buffalo River who feel like that they have lost something, that something has been taken from them, that they are never going to be able to get back. It's never going to be restored.

In this series, we'll be examining the great American doctrine of utilitarian conservation, the greatest good for the greatest number. Through the lens of the formation of the Buffalo National. River in the Ozarks of Arkansas, touted as our nation's first national river and celebrated without question, but we'll be looking at a different side of the story, one rarely told or understood, as we focus on the families who got the short end of the stick on this utilitarian doctrine and had to give up their lands, being displaced by the strong arm of the government.

In this episode, we'll talk a lot of the country. about human self-interest, take a mule ride with Willard Vlynes. Meet Grassroots historian Misty Langdon, in interview our longtime Bear Grease favorite historian and author and Hillbilly, Dr. Brooks Blevins, about how the heck all this happened. The water is ice cold and the story, complex and windy. Hang with us for a while because I really doubt that you're going to want to miss this one. Where was your house from right here?

Well, it's right up there just about 50 yards. The old foundation's all left of it. Yeah. Part tore it down. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is the Bear Grease podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant. Search for insight in unlikely places, and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land.

presented by FHF gear, American made, purpose-built, hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. I'm in the saddle atop my trusty eight-year-old paintmule Izzy, and we're following behind another perhaps even flashier, sorrel, a red, paint mule. Willard's mule Rosie is about 15 hands tall. She's good-sized. I feel like I'm following a glowing LED light,

50 feet below the surface of a forested sea of hickory, sweet gum, and walnut. We're completely under the shade until the mules' hooves touch the water as we entered the bright sunlight crossing the river. Did y'all have parts of the farm on both sides of the river? Right. How did you manage crossing it? You just didn't if it was real high? Couldn't if he was real high.

Couldn't get across the river. Yeah, when the river was there. Willard Velines is 78 years old. Born February 20, 1946, he and eight siblings were born down on this river. And two other siblings were born what he calls up on the mountain, all in Newton County, Arkansas. We're heading towards his old home place.

But first, we've got another. their home place to stop at. Grandmow's maiden name was zoned the lines. 90 year to tell about in a few short lines. Down in Uton County, down in Arkansas.

And in 191 she married Grandpa. That's good. Yeah, man. Grandma's maiden name was zon by lines. There's 90 years to about in a few short lines.

Born in Newton County down in Arkansas. Then in 191 she married Grandpa. We later sold rest one Sunday morning. Boy, that barn is in pretty good shape. Yeah. We always know that is that old Harper place. Merle Haggard's grandma lived here. Her maiden name was Zone Villan.

own Villains. Huh? She married a harp. With some of y'all's skin. Yeah. She had been my probably great-great-a-aunt. Really?

Yeah. You know he's got a criminal background, right? Well, I have two. Turn 21 in prison, doing life without parole. That was Merle Haggart's song, Grandma Harp. Her maiden name was

Villains, just like Willards. She was born in 1876 and died in 1969 at the age of 93 in Newton County. Haggard released this song in 1972, three years after her death, and it talks about her way of life dying, which is an odd coincidence, because that year, 1972, would be significant for this river and the people who lived near it. For most, it would be a year of the celebration of a conservation success, but for the people who, who had land that actually touched this river. For many of them, it's a year of infamy.

Here's Willard telling us about his so-called criminal record. Remember, we're on mules standing in front of an old barn. Matter of fact, I paid my first fine right here to the park rangers. Is that right? Right. What happened? There's about ten of us come in down here and camped. About eight of them was preachers.

Well, the next morning The park rangers come up to creek There's some horseback riders down here We was all riding mules There's some horseback riders They made fun of her mules They went back up Still Creek And told the park ranger

We just camped here And the next morning they met us down here And you weren't supposed to camp here That's what he said We slept in the old barn He said we wasn't supposed to How'd that sit with you? Well, not very good

Now the real question is Why was he making fun of your mules? I don't know. They just made light of her mules. Oh, man, that gets under my skin quick. But I told that park ranger, I said, I want you just look here. I said, when my folks lived here, I said, this was all clurred land. I said, a rabbit couldn't get through here now.

I said, I'll take the blame. I said, these other people didn't know. I asked him, I said, well, what's the fine being? And he said, be $25. He looked in his book, and he said, no, said it'll be $50. I said you look in that book and find something for $25 and he did

he charged me $25. That's the honest truth Of course either he left They took up a donation I come out my head And all the people Oh, all the preachers pitched it I don't want to make light

Of breaking the law But this story captures something That's eluded 99% of people Including me Who've enjoyed this area Which is now public land many of the families who had to sell their land to the government against their will are still sore about the whole deal, though it took place over 50 years ago. You see, today, Grandma Harp's land sits in the upper portion of a 95,730-acre block of land designated as the Buffalo National River in 1972, advertised as America's First National River.

The government acquired over 90,000 acres of private land from over 2,000 property owners, some of whose families had been in the region since this place was homesteaded. At one time, you could have driven a car in here, but since 1972, the nearest road is well over an hour's ride on a mule. The fields once cleared by Willard's kin folks have grown up into secondary succession brambles and route in the next 75 years to return to the Ozarks Climax Forest of Oak and Hickory. When you ride down the river with Willard and you hear the stories of his childhood and what used to be his community, it's kind of spooky. It might be what it's like to visit Chernobyl in Ukraine. It's like a civilization erased off the map engulfed by the subtle violence of natural reclamation cycles.

collapsing barns and smokehouses, dilapidated homes in various stages of decay, hayfields turned into cedar groves, decay in 1940s model Ford trucks laying around, and footprints of rock foundations of buildings are scattered all down the river. But it didn't happen because of a nuclear disaster or industry moving. It happened because the place was so stinking beautiful that the government decided, to turn it into a national park. And trust me, you don't want to be in the government's sites when they want your land. They've proven that.

From the perspective of a human, nature's takeover of this place seems sluggish and slow. But by how the earth measures, it's as hot-tempered and swift as a tornado. The soil is an insatiable savage, engulfing dead organic matter above it. houses, barns, and flesh, while shooting rockets of living cells to the sky, jealous for sunlight. Anything in its path be dad-gummed. Its strategy is to outlast anything and everything. The earth knows that in time, it will beat you. And in some ways, so does the government. This story is about the modern American people, not just here, who sacrificed their homelands for, quote, the greater good of society, slain by our utilitarian land use doctrine, the greatest good for the

greatest number, which we, including I, hold so dear. But if you've never had your land taken and your family uprooted, then it's hard to understand. Our national parks are celebrated in our culture, and we're proud that our nation had the idea to lead the world in preserving such places of natural beauty. But the truth is that the stories of land acquisition for the Great Smoky Mountain National Park, the Shenandoah Valley National Park, and many, many others were downright brutal.

The story of the Buffalo is a lesser-known story. Also, much like the hundreds of thousands of acres of land taken for recreational lakes in this country between the 1930s and 70s. These are not glamorous stories celebrated in our culture. but there was a time when this country was hungry for land, and somebody had to fork it up. Ozark historian Dr. Brooks Blevins

wrote that the land acquisition process of the National Park Service when inquiring land for the Buffalo was at best confusing and at worst deceptive. Before we get into the details of how this river came to be America's first national river, I want to talk with Misty Langdon, A Newton County native whose mother was a Velines related to Willard. But Misty's a grassroots community leader who created the Remnants Project,

designed to document the history of Newton County. I say, people ask me all the time why I do this, because it is so much work. And Richard, I know he pulls his hair out all the time at me because I'll go down a rabbit hole and I might not come up for a day or so. And people will call and he says, she's a lot. looking for dead people, just, you know, let her be. But there are people all up and down the Buffalo River who feel like that they have lost something, that something has been taken from them, that they are never going to be able to get back. It's never going to be restored.

It's really interesting and kind of makes my head spin backwards to hear someone talk about the Buffalo River this way, because this is a place I've only heard celebrated. But But it turns out there's a lot of stories I didn't know. I first floated this river in 1998, and after I got married in 2000, my wife and I spent a lot of time here. We even named our middle daughter River. I asked Misty, from the community's perspective, how all this went from private farmland back in the 70s into a national park. I mean, you hear rumors that something's, you know, a foot, but to actually get a notice of condemnation of your property and have no formal letter or anything before that. I think it was the shock and awe factor of how it was done.

And this would have been in the late 60s, early 70s before there was, I mean, any kind of Internet or the communication was just way different back then. And so you're saying some of these people on the river were just totally caught off guard. They were totally caught off guard. Because it had been embroiled in like at least 20 years of murmurs of this is going to be dam. This is not going to be dam. This is going to be a wild and scenic river. This is going to be. And it probably just kind of after a decade or so of that, it was just kind of like what is going to happen?

Is it ever going to happen? Well, it kind of goes back to that thing talking about isolated communities too. because in Fayetteville, the way that their town and everything was structured, they had all the amenities by the 60s, the late 60s and early 70s. There were people in Boxley that didn't have phones, and some probably still didn't have along the river. I know still didn't have, you know, electricity. They were running off generators.

Fayetteville is the largest town in the region about 50 miles from the Buffalo. Boxley is a small community at the head of the river. Interestingly, people from the Fayetteville area would play a big role in having the river nationalized. Newton County was truly the backwoods of Arkansas. And I can say this because I is one, but most of the people that lived here were white folks of low financial means and what the world would call hillbillies. People rich in land, love of country, family, and hardship. Not money, education, or political power. power. Later, we'll see where I believe the socio-economic status would come into play.

So that isolation was a real, a real hardship for them, and that was something, I think, tactically that the locals could not get over, was the lack of organization. I know in one of the oral histories that I had listened to, the interviewer asks the lady, did you ever sign petitions? Did you ever go to meetings? And the answer was they had signed a petition once the word had started to spread, but they never had meetings. You know, those are the type of things that we look at as a culture as being bad. You know, that's something that against your government, you don't have secret meetings. And I mean, it's like these are people who were complete patriots. They had fought in, you know, World War II. They had, as Korea,

World War I and to think about setting up a meeting to talk about your government. I mean, that was, and especially you think about what went through during the 50s about communism and how everybody was so nervous about being branded as a communist. I think that was just a little bit too far outside their realm of comfort. They weren't really comfortable using the tools of the time period that would have been able to combat it. It's not like these people would have been like, oh, well, here's what we do to stop a major government action. Right. Like a town hall or a, you know, or whatever. Right. They just did not utilize that because, and I'm putting words in their mouths,

because I don't know, but in my opinion, they didn't utilize it because that was just a step too far against their, against their own government. And I think that by the time, because I spoke with one guy down in Boxley, and he's about my parents' age, and I said, said, or how in the world did nobody get killed over this? Because I know how hot-tempered I am. I'm a breed love in of the lines. That is a terrible combination. And I can't imagine in the time period that they were living, I don't know how it skirted around and somebody didn't get killed. Let's stop for just a second here. It's interesting that this conversation starts from the angle that this government action to quote, preserve the buffalo is negative.

And if you're from this part of the country, you'd be hard-pressed to hear anybody say nary and negative word about this place. This Buffalo National River is the crown jewel of our state. But I'm learning that perspective can turn the whole narrative 180 degrees, flipping your doctrine into the hypocritical ditch. And that's what makes this story so interesting. We love public lands and national parks. but do we like how they make the sausage in the back room?

Are you a fan of displacement so that our society will have a place to recreate? That's a harsh question. But it's one we asked our society and they said yes to. It's what we asked the American people before displacing the families in the Shenandoah and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. And it's the question we asked America before the Indian Removal Act of 1830. It's just interesting what as a society were. able to justify. Now, the Indian Removal Act was pure wickedness. Even David Crockett thought so.

But the questions about national parks are much more nuanced. Landowners were paid and some got market value for their land and in many cases simply moved right down the road out of the park. But nonetheless, the question of heavy-handed government power and property owner rights is a big one. But let's get back to the river. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed.

And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness.

Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, I Heart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Willard Velines was born down here. We've passed Merle Haggert's Grandma's place,

and we're riding down the river's edge to the land Willard's father used to own and farm. He's taking me to another barn. So tell me about this barn. Well, my dad and two brothers older than me, and a man, Mr. Daniels, they built this barn, and they used a hand saw to cut the rashers, and they didn't have no electric tools at all, but they built all this bone with a hand tool.

What year are you thinking of this built? We moved out of here in 56, probably around 50, I'd say. So you remember as a little kid, this barn? Yeah, I remember. Yeah, I remember well. Yeah. We would cut hay off down in there. Dad would, he would rake it and shock it and they'd put it on the wagon.

I was just about, I don't know, six, seven-year-old summer's in there. But they'd let me drive the mules while they loaded the wagon. What's it like coming to a barn like this that your dad built that's now just like engulfed in forest? I don't know. It's kind of a unique situation. Well, yeah, it is. I visited it probably once a class of year and I really reminette a little bit. Yeah.

I brought my kids over here and took pictures with them over here. Now where was your house from here? It's on across the next year. We'll be able to go to your old home place? Oh yeah, we'll cross the river, yeah. Is there anything still there? The old cellar and smokehouse still there. Yeah.

The old foundation's all the left of it. Yeah. Park tore it down. the park tore down his old house. The Velines left in 1956, and I assume by 72 the old house was in disrepair and not deemed historically significant. Some of the buildings of this civilization were left

while others destroyed. How the heck did all this come about? We're heading to Willard's home place where he was born, delivered by his grandmother. We're going to have to cross what the Ozarkians call the Buffalo. Kind of leaving out the uh sound in Buffalo. It's a gravel bed stream with headwaters berth in the highest elevations of the Ozark Mountains in northwest Arkansas, the Boston Range, which reaches about 2,500 feet. The erogony of the Ozarks is the work

of incomprehensible time and erosion on an uplifted plateau that was once the bed of a shallow ocean. Fossils of fish and crustaceans are common here. Geologists and psychologists agree that humans are incapable of understanding deep geologic time beyond a shallow intellectual regurgitation of huge meaningless numbers. It's kind of like trying to explain to a grasshopper the lifespan of a white oak. The beasts of the earth only understand time and segments can grew it to their lifespans. Geologists believe the Ozarks are older than the Appalachians with origins reaching back 1.6 billion years. But even to the world's top geologists, things are hazy back that far. The Ozark Highlands or Mountains are in the central United States encompassing southern Missouri, northern Arkansas,

and a small portion in eastern Oklahoma and Kansas, and it roughly encompasses 50,000 square miles. There are no natural lakes in the Ozarks. In the rugged regions, we call them mountains, and I'd challenge any outsider to come here, hike them afoot, and tell me they aren't mountains. But if you want to talk about the epicenter of beauty and ruggedness, the Ozarks, it's hard to deny that the Buffalo River country is its lifeblood. Starting in Newton County, the meandering river flows through Cursi and Marion counties

until it enters the White River in Baxter County, 153 miles from its head. But as the crow flies, from its headwaters to its termination, is only 60 miles. The river is known for its pristine, aqua-blue, green water, towering limestone, sandstone, and dolomite bluffs, some 400 feet above the water's surface. It's known for its caves and its incredible wet-weather waterfalls. A couple hundred yards off the river up Hymden Hollow is America's largest waterfall between the Appalachians and the Rockies, which plunges 209 feet to the valley floor. However, by the calculations of men when they judge wildness based upon lack of human footprint, this river is one of America's few remaining, free-flowing, undammed rivers. And this is truly something where celebrated.

There are over 90,000 dams in America, and they dang near dammed the buffalo, put in all these houses, barns, and bluffs underwater. Dr. Brooks Blevins is a professor at Missouri State University and a prolific author about the Ozarks. In 2022, he published a book called Up South in the Ozarks. In it, he has an essay called Against the Current. I want to get into the deeper history of how the buffalo was saved from being damned and how it became a national river. Here's myself and Dr. Brooks Blevins. Well, in your interest, particularly in the Buffalo and the essay that you wrote in your book, it's interesting when I first contacted you, I believe you said you felt like you were the only historian that had written about this from the perspective.

of the people that had been displaced. And that kind of links back to your story about your grandparents. And that was a story the world was not interested in hearing of these, oftentimes not that well-to-do, impoverished people living in these rural places getting displaced. Like that's not the story that America wanted to tell and America wanted to hear. Yeah, that was not a story that was told and wouldn't be. for, you know, another generation. And there was no guerrilla press at that time.

It was something that mostly was just forgotten and remained forgotten. And I think as far as I know, I am the only person on the, for the Buffalo River story, I'm the only person who's ever approached it. I should say I'm the only person who's ever published anything that approaches it from the kind of the perspective of the landowners. But as far as the published record, what the public has access to, there's very little from the perspective

of the people who lost their land, the people who really made the sacrifice that the rest of us now enjoy the fruits of. We mentioned a story about Dr. Blevins' grandparents. It's a family story that led him to be interested in the displaced landowners on the river. Though they didn't live on the Buffalo, but rather in the White River watershed just to the northwest, I want to hear what happened to them.

My great-great-grandparents lived on Pigeon Creek, which is a tributary of the North Fork of the White River, and my great-great-grandpa was born there just a year or two before the Civil War. And so they were still there in the early 1940s when the Army Corps of Engineers started building the dam. Norfolk Dam, but they were one of the families who had to sell their land to the government. And they were moved, I don't know, a few miles south of Mountain Home, kind of a rocky hillside down there somewhere. And I found out not too many years ago what happened. I was able to contact one of my grandpa's own cousins, as we say in the Ozarks, first cousins.

and she told me the story of when the authorities, whoever the authorities were, I don't know if it was the sheriff's officer. But when they came out, you know, they'd been given the final warning that they had to vacate their farm. This was before they shut the floodgates and, you know, flooded the valleys and all that kind of stuff. And she said her grandparents, my great-great-grandparents, refused to leave. They were in their 80s and they had lived there. you know, practically all their adult lives. So they, you know, they didn't want to go like a lot of other landowners there and a lot of

other farmers there. She said that they refused to leave and the authorities came out and physically carried them off the premises. Now, I don't know of, you know, in my mind, I see two old-timers planking or something. You know, they're stiff as a board being carried out, but they may have carried them off in chairs or whatever, but. And that received no. statewide press, no national press.

No, it, no, it didn't. The local weekly newspaper, the Baxter Bulletin, was operated by an editor named Tom Shyrus. And Chiris was one of the premier dam promoters in the state of Arkansas. So this is not a story he would talk. No, no, this is not. It's not a story that was likely to show up in the Baxter Bulletin. It's interesting, but government land condemnation. Whether for a lake or a national park, rarely made big headlines back in the day.

There's a famous photo of a pregnant woman named Lessie Jenkins being carried out of her home in a rocking chair in 1937 when her family, including her seven children, were evicted from their home by the National Park Service to make Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. And books have been written about the process of land acquisition for the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina. And all the stories are eerily similar. I now want to get to the deep history with Dr. Blevins about the Buffalo. And surprisingly, we're going to have to go back to the great Mississippi River flood of 1927.

But if you're a bare Greece listener, you remember our Mississippi River series, which started at episode 126. And if you listen, you'll have a head start. To really dig into the heart of the heart of it. of this matter, you have to go back even before the Great Depression, at least to the great Mississippi River flood of 1927. That was the event that really altered the trajectory of what the Army Corps of Engineers was expected to do. Before that, the Army Corps of Engineers was an organization that mainly built levees and dikes along big rivers. But the Army Corps of Engineers,

was not a dam building agency. And because of the tremendous destruction, the economic impact of that flood in 1927, all of a sudden politicians had, in the Mississippi Valley, had tremendous pressure put on them to do something to prevent another devastating flood like this. Because you've got to remember, in the Mississippi Valley, the flood of 1927 was basically what,

led us into the Great Depression. And then you get into the heart of the Great Depression. And then FDR takes office in 1933. And you have a completely new way of looking at the way the government handles crises in a way that we've never done before, where they just try to spend your way out of it. You spend money, you put it in the hands of people who don't have it, and you expect them to turn around and spend it.

and try to prime the pump of the economy that way. And so it's kind of that one-two punch of the 1927 flood and the Great Depression leading into the New Deal that all of a sudden puts dams front and center on the radar for the Army Corps of Engineers. Dams came on the radar of America. They were all the rage. As we follow this story chronologically,

it's also relevant to note that in 1936, there was a 4,000-acre Buffalo River State Park formed, which was the first indication that this place was a special place for recreation. But let's get back to talking about the long periods of time that all this stuff took. So these flood control acts, they plant the seed for these dams. Now, just because a dam is mentioned in one of these flood control acts doesn't mean it's going to get built. What they do is they authorize these dams.

Then the Army Corps of Engineers has to go out, finalize its plans. They have to do public hearings to gauge responses from the public. And then if they decide that the benefit cost analysis is favorable, then they go back to Congress and they present their case and they say, you know, can we have the money to build this? And so that's why it's such a long process. That's why, you know, these buffalo dams are first mentioned as early as 1938, but the battle for the Buffalo doesn't even heat up, really, till the 1960s. So what happened? So really, they talked about a dam on the Buffalo River in the 1930s.

Yeah, there's an extensive White River dam plan, a reservoir plan, that's, you know, first presented in 38. It's interesting to look back at the big swings in government ideology. around what the job of the government actually is. And as author and Bear Greece's guest, John Barry, said in his book Rising Tide, the 1927 flood truly changed America. And oddly, we'll see how it affected the Buffalo River. The Flood Control Act of 1938 was an extensive plan to build dams that included stuff

on all the tributaries of the mighty Mississippi to hold back water during major floods. And that's right. old Willard Veline's Buffalo River in Arkansas was on there twice. So decades before the National River was ever imagined, they were wanting to damn this spectacular River Valley. It seems like that could have an effect on the way people handled it with this like slow burn of kind of government bureaucracy and rumors. I mean, that's like a generation and a half of just rumors.

And finally, people have. just, I mean, it kind of just gets in their mind that, well, this is going to be damned or it feels like that can play a role as opposed to just someone's showing up and knocking on your door and being like, we're damning the river. It's like, well, we've been hearing about this for 30 years and it's never happened. Yeah, that was, you know, there's definitely a psychological angle to that because I've studied a lot of the newspaper coverage and letters and things like that, not just from the Buffalo, but from other dam projects. And some of them that never got done, but that they dragged on for years and years, I mean, for a generation or more. Yeah.

And every three or four years, here comes the Army Corps of Engineers with another hearing. And over time, one thing that can happen is, like you say, people might just become complacent and think, well, this is never going to happen. They're never going to build anything. Or they might just decide, well, there's nothing we can do. Yeah. You know, that seems like a common thing, maybe. Or in some cases, people just got matter and matter and matter. And so you kind of, this crescendo of anger at the Army Corps of Engineers builds up.

It seems like governments and the earth have something in common. Neither are hemmed in to short time spans that humans are comfortable operating in. They'll wait you out. Rumors of long-term land use plans affect how people plan their lives. I want to read something from Dr. Neil Compton's 1992 book, Battle for the Buffalo, because it gives a picture of the times. Compton writes, The rough mountainous country of much of the Ozarks and the Boston Mountains

has failed to sustain the initial population of white settlers. The numbers of white pioneers had peaked about 1900, after which an exodus began. Between 1950 and 1960, Arkansas lost 250,000 people and one congressman as a result, but that was not necessarily a calamity. Cut over, eroded, and impoverished uplands were going back to nature. Opportunity for productive, long-term civil culture, and wildlife restoration existed. End of quote. The immigration that happened is beyond dispute. However, I get the sense this became part of the justification of making this land into a park, as in people don't want to live here.

People were leaving rural America to go to the cities for work. Rural communities needed help, and they said, let's build some lakes, which wasn't a bad idea and may have even been a good one, but some were destined for the raw end of this deal. The times were tough, but they didn't push everybody out. And there was a thriving community along the Buffalo River that never left. Nobody told them that times were hard. And Dr. Neil Compton would be the major player in nationalizing the river. He's even known as the park's father.

I'd never heard him referred to as anything but a conservation hero until I started talking to folks whose families had to sell because of the park. There'll be more about this on the next episode. but there were multiple big dam projects in northern Arkansas and all across the country. They were touted for producing electricity, increasing tourism, and increasing real estate value in which in most cases they delivered. And because of it, there was surprisingly little coordinated public protest until they started talking about the Buffalo. There's not a lot of public protest against any of these dams that,

that get built in the White River basin until, you know, until you get to like Buffalo and Water Valley Dam. Why wasn't there more public protests? Because it's, I read that the Buffalo was one of the, the Corps of Engineers, even in D.C. was like, what? The people are upset about this, damn? They hadn't received a lot of opposition. Yeah. That is something that I've, that I've spent a long time trying to figure out the sociology and the psychology of the timing of public protests, there were always protests from landowners who didn't want to go. But one of the things that may be surprised and certainly upset these landowners was that they found that most of their neighbors who didn't have land in the flood basin were usually in favor of the dams. I mean, that's just the way

almost every, almost every case, and a lot of that just has to do with human self-interest. You know, it stands the reason that if you're going to lose your farm, you're going to be against this. If you're not, what's probably going to happen is land values are going to go up. You're in most cases where these dams are built. Prosperity to a certain degree follows in these areas, and all the politicians are pro-dam. Because they're getting money. This is pork barrel politics. You know, I am bringing money and lots of millions of dollars back to my district.

And you're hurting just a small portion of your constituents, 1% of your constituents maybe. Right. And all the rest of them are probably for it. Yeah, and you even see in the, like in the hearings and stuff, the argument, the greatest good for the greatest number. The great American land ethic, the utilitarian conservation of our beloved. love Teddy Roosevelt, the greatest good for the greatest number. It's brilliant, unless you're the one that's having to pay so that others can have your stuff. And honestly, when you put it like that, it kind of sounds like communism. And so there's very little concern for that

kind of insignificant minority of people who are going to lose their homes and going to lose their farms. Is that just the cost of having a prosperous nation? Because that really could be I mean you know you look at the Interstate Highway system You know you have a similar thing that happens there Is especially in cities where there have been studies That show that especially low-income

neighborhoods often were just completely obliterated or Part of it is Yeah somebody's got somebody's got to make a sacrifice If you're going to do any of this stuff Now today a lot a lot of people People with a more environmentalist ethic and a more kind of naturalist ethic would say, well, did we even need the dams in the first place? I mean, that would be a question. But nobody was asking that question back then because it was all about priming the pump, getting dam building jobs, and then the economic benefits that were expected to accrue from those dams being built.

And the hydroelectric power was a big cell. I mean, that was like today's modern energy independence and maybe even renewable energy and all this, like, this is the way of the future. I mean, they were preaching hydroelectricity. That's a big thing, Clay, that was, and it's hard for us to understand because today hydropower is just a tiny little percentage of our national power grid. But in those days, hydropower was a, it's a major selling point. It's kind of disheartening to see how little was gained from all these dams and to see the empty wishes of the government on energy production. It has echoes of the renewable energy headlines of today. But don't take this as me knocking renewable energy.

I ain't again it, but I don't trust any sides short-sided energy propaganda. When all you care about is the next four years you're bound to make bad decisions. We do well to learn from the Chinese. and think of building our nation in 100-year segments. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed and there was a full of blood.

Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwards. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person.

He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, I Heart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to step out of this conversation and get back on the river with Willard. We've crossed the river and are headed towards where he was born. He turns his mule around in the trail to face me.

He wants to tell me a story. My two older brothers had two cousins about their age, these teenagers. They'd meet right here every morning to walk to school together. My two cousins lived on down the creek about a handful of them off. Well, they found them a yellow jacket nest, and they got to backing each other out to see which one could find them the longest. They stripped their clothes off, naked, and they cut them a switch, and they'd get in there and they'd fight them yellow jackets

and see who can stay at the longest. They said that young Arrbaugh boy, he was her first cousin. They said that youngest Arbor boy could stay there longer than any of them. He was the youngest, but he could stay longer. He was the toughest one. Yeah, he was the toughest one. But now they had a lot to do, didn't it? That was their entertainment back in.

Yeah. We ride and cross the river one more time. I see a stone structure built into the hillside. Old fruit cellar right here. Can he describe to me what this looks like? Well, a fruit seller is what they put the canned fruit in. It kept it cool. Our cellar stays about the same temperature about the year around with the door on it.

It's kind of dug into the hillside, probably 10 or 12 feet, and it's got a concrete front on it, but kind of dry-laid stone around, and it just looks like a cave. They used it for a storm cellar, too, when they come a storm. Where was your house from right here? Well, it's right up for just about 50 yards. The old foundation's all the left of it.

Yeah. Park tore it down. Willard and his family have deep roots on this river that's now public land. I want to get back to Dr. Blevins and see how the community reacted in the 1960s to the prospect of damning this river. But part of it, too, is, you know, if you're talking about why there's no public protest, and I use the phrase public protest on purpose because, again, there's plenty of protest, it just doesn't make it to the public level.

And a lot of that's because most of the newspapers, at least through the 1950s, were champions of dam building. This was seen as a progressive thing that any booster of a town or a state or anything like that, you've got to be for a dam building because of the economic impact. And if you're not, you're just stuck in the past. You know, you're not going anywhere. It would be like fighting a tide. Yeah. We don't want the internet today, you know, get it out of here.

That was going on. And then in Arkansas, to a person, all the politicians were damn advocates. Well, that's what's so interesting about this story. Like we're highlighting the Buffalo River, but this thing happened all over the place. Oh, yeah. Nationwide. And so, but it's not, it's just not a story that you hear that much about. because it's the unglamorous part of nation building.

Stories of displacement aren't glamorous. And in the 40s, 50s, and 60s dams were hot, but peaked after World War II. The Army Corps of Engineers was the most powerful of all the bureaus and had ambitions to dam every river in America. But now we'll enter the phase we'll call the Battle for the Buffalo, which at this point is primarily, a fight to keep it from being damned. The battle for the Buffalo really starts in the early 1960s.

You had an attempt in the late 50s, get money appropriated for a couple of dams. Eisenhower vetoes the bill. It sort of goes away until JFK takes office in 61. And for the most part, in that era, Democrats tended to be bigger proponents of dam building and the activities that aren't. Army Corps of Engineers than Republicans.

And so that's when everything kind of breaks loose is in 62 when this Gilbert Dam proposal comes online. At the same time, in the background, you've got Bill Fulbright, Senator from Arkansas. He's already talking to the National Park Service. They're already doing their surveys and things in the Buffalo Valley trying to decide if this would be a valuable and worthy addition to the National Park Service. So that's all going on in the background. So you've got in the late 50s, the National Park Service starts this initiative they call Mission 66.

And 1966 is going to be the 50th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service. So what they're doing, they're trying to, for about a decade, they're going to really, really build things up and do a lot of loud, splashy things to add to the National Park Service. and part of the new stuff is lakeshores and seashores and even rivers. So you've got a lot of water stuff. It's not just these massive western parks. It's like a new way to think about a national park. Yeah, and it's not just Western stuff and a handful of things in Appalachia. So they first do Cape Cod in the early 60s.

That's the first of these modern kind of watery, you know, national park things. and then they get into the river business. So that's what's happening. You've got this change of directions a little bit for the National Park Service in the late 50s and early 60. Interestingly, the first person to plant the seed for the Buffalo region as National Park Worthy was a writer named Glenn Green in 1946 who published a story about the region. But it wouldn't be until 1961 when the first money, $7,000, was appropriated for the the National Park Service to do a survey of the river.

The first drawings of this potential park included over 400,000 acres, but it would later be whittled down to about 95,000. So now there are two stakeholders with their site set on the river, the Army Corps of Engineers who wanted a dam and the National Park Service who wanted a park. So in 62, the Army Corps of Engineers comes to Marshall and they have a public hearing, And it turns into basically a pro-dam public hearing as a lot of those early Army Corps of Engineers hearings did.

You know, just the booster showed up. And so it's in 62 when you have the creation of a local booster group. It's called the Buffalo River Improvement Association, the BRIA, and they're basically just the damn boosters is what they are. And they're not the people, primarily not the people who are living down the landowners. Probably not a one of them in the BRIA is a lot. landowner. It's led by a local newspaper editor. In reaction to that, you get the creation of the Ozark Society with Neil Compton, who's a medical doctor from Bentonville and far northwestern which is probably 50 miles from the headbutters of the Buffalo. And what the Ozark Society

represents, they're canoeist and, you know, just people, recreation, people who are interested in the Buffalo. And Compton was a guy who for years had been canoeing the Buffalo. So that's the Ozark Society. And then around the same time, you get the Buffalo River Landowners Association. So you get a third organization in the mix. And these are the actual landowners. These are the people who own the land up and down the Buffalo River, who are initially against the dam.

And then ultimately, they'll be against the National Park Service idea as well, when they realize, well, either way, we're in danger of losing our land. So these, to lay out the players in the field, the BRI, these people that were pro-dam, didn't own land on the river. Then the Ozark Society came in and wanted to, they were anti-dam. Right. But their interest in the river was recreation. And then the Buffalo River Landowners Association, which would have been people that ultimately wanted none of it. Yeah.

Yeah. If they had had a motto, it would have been, leave us alone, I guess. Yeah. Really, for the most part, it becomes a two-person fight because the Buffalo River Landowners Association, they're way back there. You know, if this is a race, they're almost out of side. And they don't have a big constituents. It's like picking teams for a game and you've got 10 options where the other team has 100,000 options. I mean, there's only so many landowners.

There's only so many people that on the county records have a deed that touches that river. Right, yeah. I think I mentioned in that story at one of the hearings they do in Marshall, the speaker for the Buffalo River Landowners Association, he's scheduled at very last, at the very end of the hearing. By that time, most of the reporters had left. You know, they were just, they didn't have any political clout, any political poll, and everybody knew it.

The Corps of Engineers knew it. The Ozark Society knew it. You know, it just, and they were mostly, most of the landowners were ignored throughout that process. This idea of the landowners being ignored is really the whole point of this story. And if nothing else, our efforts here are a hat tip to them. But the truth is, I'm not sure where I would have landed if I'd been around in this time. Historical revision is really easy and deceptive and often paints a false sense of righteousness in us. The truth is that people were all over the board. There were some landowners that

had just moved into the region, had no real roots here, and they weren't bothered by a dam or a park. Some folks were real estate people, and they loved the idea of a dam. It was a relatively small group of people who didn't want either, and in a democracy, small numbers of people get squashed, period. But that all starts in about 62s, when the sides are drawn up, and you really get the beginnings, this battle for the Buffalo,

And that's when you start getting hard feelings and between neighbors and there's a fight that breaks out at a high school basketball game and some guys are arrested. And so you get, it's also right around the same time that Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, William Douglas, comes and floats the Buffalo in a very public way. Supreme Court Justice Douglas was anti-dam. But in 1965, the tables turned and the pro-dam people gained some. major steam, and it looks like the river's going to be damned until an unlikely hero arises. And so it's looking like 65 might be the year when they finally get this past. And then in

late 65, the governor of Arkansas, Orville Falbus, who is much known in American history for other, you know, more unfortunate circumstances, he steps in and in effect saves the Buffalo from being damned. If you don't know the name Orville Fobbas, he became the face of racism and segregation in 1957 when, as governor of Arkansas, he ordered the National Guard to block nine African-American students from entering Little Rock High School. These students became known as the Little Rock Nine and are rightfully celebrated today as heroes.

However, when it comes to his natural resource policies, I think Fobis did us a solid. He wrote a lengthy and eloquent letter about the natural beauty of the Buffalo River and how it was unacceptable for it to be damned and that he supported a national park. You know, Fobbus's letter really puts the Army Corps of Engineers back on their heels.

And then John Paul Hammersmith takes office in 67. One of the first things that this new representative for Northwest Arkansas does is he proposes a Buffalo River National Park bill. And it takes five years for it to go through the political process and eventually be signed by Richard Nixon. It does... March 1st, 1972. Yeah.

Remember that we said 72 was a year of celebration and infamy. It's all a matter of perspective, which will really explore deeply on the next episode when we talk about a lady named Ev or Granny Henderson. That's some foreshadowing for you. It does eventually get passed. I guess from a landowner's perspective, this all happens really.

It just flips. You know, you go from fearing that your land is going to be drowned and you're sort of elated, I guess, when you defeat that threat. And then you turn around and here's, you know, here's this National Park Service bill that comes. It's kind of portrayed as if it was either one of the other or like the National Park is what saved it from being damned.

Was that ever really true? You could certainly be justified in portraying the battle that way. And here's why when the Army Corps of Engineers backed off a project, they usually didn't back off of it permanently. A permanent back off would have to, they would have to actually. You might wait until a new governor came in or the sentiment was different politically. They could do that. To permanently get something, get a damn project off the books, it would have to be deauthorized by Congress.

And that rarely ever happened. What they would usually do is they would just sort of put it on a back burner and say, this is not a priority for us anymore. And we know that they'll wait decades. Yeah. We know that from even this. It's not, if it goes away for a year, that means nothing. Your grandchildren might have that lake in their backyard.

Yeah, and if you follow a lot of the, as I've done a lot of the newspaper coverage of these various dam projects through time from the 40s into the 70s, you can go a dozen years without a dam being mentioned in the press. And then all of a sudden, here we are, you know, 10 or 12 years later. And here's a new hearing on a dam that I'd completely forgotten about. as I think in volume three, I compared it, the Army Corps dam plans to like a monster out of a horror film. You know, you think it's gone, but it's not really. You know, it's just going to, it's going to pop back up when you don't expect it to. And so that was the justification for the Ozark Society. Yeah.

And the people like that was, we can't trust the Army Corps of Engineers. They're not going to go away. So the only safe way to keep this river free flowing is to turn it into a national park. In the next episode, we'll learn if that was actually true. And going back to our odd coincidence at the start, in March of 1972, Merle Haggart also released his song, Grandma Harp, which told about how her way of life had gone. The region was now under control of the National Park Service, which now had money. appropriated to buy land from the private citizens who owned the 90,000 acres that would become the park.

We later sold rest one Sunday morning, and everybody knew she'd done her part. Don't get set to hear no hidden family legend. Just a song about the life of Grandma Heart. Just think about the times that she lived through. I want to get back to the river with Willard. Do you want to walk up to the old home place? Yeah, the old smoke house up. We can ride up already.

We get through right here if you want to. Oh, okay. Yeah. We're at the fruit cellar, and we ride up the hill to the old home place. Well, this year it was where it was born, the old smoke house. And the old house place was right back over here just behind us. What did the house look like? Well, it was just a three-room house.

He had one bedroom in the kitchen and the dining room. Was it made of oak? He was made of oak, yeah, boards, yeah. Did it have a rock foundation that went to the ground or did it set up, like set up on rocks? No, he had a rock foundation. In wood floors. In wood floors, right. And you were delivered by your grandmother.

Yeah, my grandmother, Hanson. Actually, you were born right here. Right. What's it like coming back in here? here. You ride this stretch of river a couple times a week. Yeah, I come in here and reminisce and show people around sometime, you know, some of my friends and talk to them, yeah. You know, I guess in some ways it's better that it's like this than if it were under a lake somewhere.

I've enjoyed it all my life, so, yeah, I've been blessed. Yeah. Sure have. Yeah. This is the first episode on the formation of the Buffalo National River, but this This story is really about something much bigger. I'm sure many of you have family stories of people being forced from their land because of lakes, parks, or highways. The irony we wrestle with today is how seemingly happy many of us are that it happened to someone else. Or at least it didn't happen in our generation.

On the next episode, we'll go back in time and hear an original interview with the Buffalo River's First Lady. who was featured in National Geographic in 1974, Eva Barnes-Henderson, or Granny Henderson, as we know her. And we'll continue to discuss one of America's most valued public land doctrines, the greatest good for the greatest number. And let me tell you, it's going to get really personal. I'd like to take a minute and thank my friends, Justin House, and Kalin Belize, both lifelong residents of Newton County,

who had lots of family on the river and both helped me immensely in setting up these interviews and inspiring me with their family stories. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Greece and Brent's this Country Life podcast. Please share our podcast with a friend this week

and I look forward to talking with all those hillbillies on the render next week. On blood trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood.

Oh, my God. He doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there. But he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whisper.

suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments, and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, Iheart YouTube. or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.